EZRA LEVANT ｜ David Menzies was arrested again — at the request of the Conservative Party!
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Summary
Rebel reporter David Menzies is arrested again, this time at the request of the Conservative Party. Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer in Canada? And why should they get away with it?
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. An interesting and rough weekend. Two rebels were arrested. I'll show
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you video footage of both. Of course, if you're listening on a podcast, you won't be able to see
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the video. You'll be able to understand some of it through the audio. But this is a perfect
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example of why I'd like to encourage you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's
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the video version of these podcasts. It's eight bucks a month. You get all of my shows, which is
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daily, plus weekly shows by Sheila Gunn-Reed, David Menzies, and Andrew Chapados. Just eight
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bucks. Go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe. Thanks. Here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, David Menzies is arrested again, this time at the request of the Conservative Party.
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It's July 26, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's
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I'm getting a bit sick of our reporters being arrested. Two of our teammates over the weekend,
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first in Australia, Avi Yamini's bodyguard was singled out of a crowd and grabbed by police,
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smashed to the floor, handcuffed, punched, and kneed. Take a look.
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Grab that door. Grab that door. Grab this door.
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No, no, he's security. He's security. Hey, he's our security, sir. He's our security.
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I'm at work. He's our security. He's our security. He's our security.
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He's working with us. He's working with us. He's working with us.
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Daniel on the ground, who is here as our licensed security guard,
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And I told you guys at the time that he was working security.
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And to me, it felt very malicious and vindictive.
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He's a licensed, insured security guard whose only job is to stop people from attacking Avi.
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No one attacked Avi, but the police thought they'd rough up the security guard,
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But then yesterday, Sunday, in the greater Toronto area,
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our reporter David Menzies was going to cover two political events yesterday.
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A conservative event with Melissa Lantzman and the liberal event with Maji Johari.
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Then I suddenly received a phone call that David had been arrested.
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These are the guys that want to form the next government.
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You know, he asked a lot of questions of that cop.
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And just for asking those questions, the cop charged him additionally with resisting arrest.
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Because he was talking and asking questions of the cop, disputing the claim against him.
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And look at what happens to David's notebook when he gets arrested.
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To help you, we'll put a bright circle around it.
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That woman is one of Erin O'Toole's campaign organizers.
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When the cops arrested David, they grabbed his notebook and rifled through it and took pictures of every page.
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If you dare ask a prickly question to a would-be politician, this is what happens.
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These are the guys that want to form the next government.
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And you know who put down the purse and you saw it and you know who it is and they're right
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there, but they're behind you or you're behind them.
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So because they're tied up for a moment, you grab the purse and rifle through the purse and
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And I think you could say it's actually obstructing a police investigation.
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That and all other personal items on David were in the custody of police during the arrest.
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By the way, I think the O'Toole campaign still has David's notebook.
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I know they're calling up other journalists around town and telling them what's in David's
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notebook because one of the journalists who received such a call told me that David was
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He was splashed with what I think was water, but I don't know.
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And all because he asked some prickly questions.
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It wasn't a particularly important event to cover.
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Like I say, David was planning to pop by there just for a bit before going to a liberal event,
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but they called the cops on him saying he assaulted people.
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What I can tell you is that there was an incident during the organized event that led
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to multiple calls of him causing a disturbance as well as physically, you know, causing assaults.
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And he didn't swear at them either, even though police charged him with that.
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And the O'Toole campaign, Melissa Lansman, the local candidate, they lied to the police
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Video footage of David's arrest went viral on Twitter.
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And so 10 hours later, that O'Toole candidate, Melissa Lansman, put out a damage control memo.
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She said she wasn't the one who called police, but she said she'll cooperate with any investigation.
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I presume that would be our demand that the people who threw things at David and splashed water on him or whatever,
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that they're charged, the woman who rifled through David's notebook.
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But Lansman went on the offensive at her late-night memo to switch the subject.
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This wasn't about David being arrested or David's notebook or David having water thrown at him.
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It was actually all about David being very homophobic because, you see, Melissa Lansman is gay.
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You can see Lansman says David was bigoted, and that's why everything went sideways yesterday.
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She doesn't quite say that's why they called the police on him, but I assume that's why.
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And we know Lansman's gay because she won't stop talking about it.
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It's actually not that special in the year 2021.
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There are openly gay politicians at every level of politics.
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Being a gay politician a generation ago was probably pretty hard.
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Sven Robinson, if you remember him, was the first MP to come out as gay back in 1988.
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And he was punished by being re-elected for 16 more years.
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I mean, good for you, but being a gay candidate in 2021 is not a substitute for also having good ideas.
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And the rest of her real resume is pretty rough.
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I mean, here's how her interview started out with David.
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So, Melissa, I've got to ask you, how can you run to represent the writing of Thornhill
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when you were somewhat responsible for so many businesses going under
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and so many people losing their jobs as a paid lobbyist for Walmart?
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You made sure your client stayed open at the expense of other businesses,
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The mandate for Walmart was entirely on vaccines, and that's all available information,
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What do you mean the mandate for Walmart was vaccines?
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I didn't speak about it at the time because they were still in active climate,
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but we allowed Walmart to get into the vaccine pipeline.
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Melissa, you were in the war room of Doug Ford in 2018.
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Phrases like, Ontario opened for business and for the people.
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And then you were instrumental in shutting down businesses, putting them out of business,
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putting people out of a job so that this multi-billion dollar corporation based in the U.S.
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could remain open, not only selling essentials, but non-essentials.
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Why could Walmart sell flowers, but Jane's Flowers couldn't sell flowers?
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I'm sure that's a question for the Ontario government on why they made that decision.
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But again, I told you our mandate was on vaccine procurement.
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How much did you get paid by Walmart, by the way, Melissa?
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Lansman made her sexuality central to her campaign, and just as much so did Erin O'Toole.
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He wanted her to be a living, grieving rebuttal to the claim from the CBC and the media party
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Again and again, the conservative party said Lansman is proof that they're all past that.
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Did you win on merit or on the basis of your sexual orientation?
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I mean, I think that would be a rude question to any other candidate who didn't talk about
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But for Lansman, it's like she's a vegan or on a gluten-free diet.
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Were you chosen based on merit or based on sexual orientation?
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I think the nomination is over and we won the nomination.
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Pretty tough to write glowing op-eds about yourself being gay, but then be mad when someone
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David put the question to her in similar phrasing a couple more times, and then he was arrested
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But it wasn't until close to midnight that the Lansman campaign decided to rebrand that
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question from David as the real crisis of the day.
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And to say she was worried for her safety by his homophobia.
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I think that's just the standard playbook of the identity politics left.
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If you have a Black Lives Matter candidate, anyone who criticizes them is a racist.
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If you have a feminist candidate, anyone who criticizes them is a sexist.
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And for Lansman, questions about Walmart or questions about how she won the nomination,
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questions about if she's just simply an LGBT mascot, that's all called homophobia.
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And maybe if she shouts it enough, it'll drown out the concerns about arresting a reporter,
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assaulting him, and rifling through his notebook.
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We've set up a page at SaveMenzies.com to crowdfund to fight the charges and to help us go on
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the offensive to make sure the lady who threw the liquid on David is investigated by police.
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But this whole affair has me thinking about things.
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I mean, Saturday in Melbourne, Sunday in Thornhill, Ontario.
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Drea Humphrey was manhandled by Trudeau's security in Vancouver just a couple weeks ago.
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Just last week, Alexa Lavoie, our Montreal reporter, was also manhandled by Trudeau's security.
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And I don't know, either they're woke police or the cops have become political themselves
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or they're just taking orders from politicians, especially during the lockdown.
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I mean, a day after Toronto's Mayor John Tory denounced Adam Skelly's barbecue, that's when
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the police sent in 100 officers to raid the place with riot horses, probably the largest
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Jason Kenney denounced churches that were open during the lockdown and the police heard.
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So they arrested and humiliated four pastors, including a spectacular highway takedown of one
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Politicians are living out their authoritarian fantasies.
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And the courts are submissive, all in the name of a pandemic.
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And at the same time, most of the rest of the media are bought off.
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They're happy to cash their bailout checks from Trudeau in return for going easy on authoritarianism.
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So I'm worried, especially if the liberals are reelected with their plans for censorship.
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I'm worried more of our people will be arrested, Bill C-10, Bill C-36.
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Here's a tweet from Aaron O'Toole a couple of days ago talking about how they're the only
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Look at this video clip from the House of Commons, from Aaron O'Toole's heritage critic,
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the one who's supposed to fight against censorship.
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There's nothing in this bill that allows for the regulation of social media or platforms
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And it's clear we would have liked to have seen this in the bill.
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The minister even says we have to find a way of preventing hate speech, conspiracy theories,
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But right now in the bill, unfortunately, we won't even be able to amend it in that aspect.
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He's saying he wants to crack down on misinformation and hate speech and all the other political
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We'll make sure we're careful and we'll stay within the law carefully.
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We have lawyers brief our reporters on legal matters all the time.
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But we're going to cover politicians of every stripe in the upcoming campaign.
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Trudeau's liberals, O'Toole's liberal conservatives, Singh's NDP, whoever owns the Green Party at
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And we're going to ask questions, even if the questions are prickly, even if the questions
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And the right answer to a reporter's question is to answer it or to not answer him, but
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not to attack him, arrest him, and steal his notebook.
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And joining us now is our chief Australia correspondent, our friend Avi Yamini.
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Thanks for getting up at an odd hour to be interviewed with us.
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I was upset that they targeted your security guard, Daniel, who's a very professional guy,
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He follows the rule the best fight is the one you never get into.
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He's professional, insured, licensed, the whole thing.
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I think cops were trying to get at you by getting at your team.
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It seemed, and it felt in the moment, very targeted.
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It's kind of, they looked past me as in, we know he's untouchable, but how do we get him?
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We get the guy who's there simply to protect him lawfully, even under the health directions.
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Like, for example, you know there's a specific exemption on masks for journalists who are talking
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Obviously, you can't really be a TV journalist as their mouth is covered.
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Some of these cops don't know that you've schooled them before.
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And if the cops come at you, we've got several lawsuits against the cops for false arrest.
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They know that I follow the rules by the letter of the law and that, like you say, I seem
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So when I say untouchable, I mean on two levels.
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One, they know that when they cross the line, we take them to court with the help of the
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viewers and we go directly to the Supreme Court.
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And then on top of that, it's the embarrassment of if you don't know the rules that you're
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trying to enforce and you're doing it simply out of a for a power trip, you get schooled
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and the entire exposed to the entire world as the power hungry person you are.
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And I'm and I'm very pleased that we are suing the Victoria police.
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That's the name of the police force in the state.
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That's also the police in the city of Melbourne, I understand.
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So they know that they can't push you around with impunity.
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That's why I'm a little surprised they're going after Daniel, your bodyguard.
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I feel like, you know, they've been told now, don't don't grab him.
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He's not worth the pain that we're going to feel.
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You know, trust me, they're feeling a lot of pain in the courts for, you know,
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So it's clear that they don't like what we're putting him through.
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So they've given some sort of notice to the people on the ground as in, you know,
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make sure if you engage, you're 100 percent in the right.
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But nobody told him that they can't grab my security guard.
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Well, as you know, we have a policy, don't leave anyone behind.
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We really go the extra mile if someone on our team's under attack,
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either if they're physically attacked in some way or if they're legally attacked in some way.
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So I'll let you reveal anything on your own time.
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I know we've got some really good lawyers down under.
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So when you and Daniel and our lawyers are ready to make an announcement about what you're going to do,
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if anything, let us know, of course, consult with us.
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I'm sure our viewers would love to crowdfund it.
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I know you're a big hit down under, but in Canada, the UK, the United States,
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a lot of people get their Australian news from you, especially on the lockdown.
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So I think you would, you and by extension, your bodyguard, Daniel, would get a lot of support.
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Just make sure he knows that we've got his back.
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I'm sure he does know that, but you can tell him from me.
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We had Madeline, who's been doing a lot of our fights and some of our civil action as well,
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And she was the one who actually organised all that.
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And Daniel, once we got off that camera, he just goes, can you tell Madeline thank you?
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They didn't let me even engage with the police that were the arresting officers or whatever.
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And he felt that level of comfort because they came in to him and they said, is Madeline Smith your lawyer?
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And I've never been put in jail or a police cell myself, so I can only imagine what it would be like.
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But I'm sure worry and risk and, uh-oh, how long am I in here?
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I'm sure those are all questions that come to mind.
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So it must have been comforting for him to know there was someone on the case.
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I've had the pleasure of talking with her several times on the phone.
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She's pretty sharp and she's got an excellent record.
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Well, I suppose that's the most important thing.
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You mentioned earlier that the police sort of have the word out, you know, don't mess with Avi unless you're going in with clean hands.
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I think police should be that way all the time.
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But just in case folks are skeptical and they think maybe it's some narcissism on your part, if you watch that whole video, the police clearly know who you are, clearly know your name, and they call you by your first name, first name basis to each other.
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In fact, there was a moment you caught it on tape where a boss cop tells the other cops, watch whatever he does, and if he does anything more, we'll have to have more enforcement against him.
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But they basically are saying, get him if we can.
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They're setting it up for, and that has a lot to do with the cases we have in front of the courts at the moment, because until now, it's all been unlawful arrests, unlawful detainments.
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And so now what they try to do, they're trying to, and even in their wording, they try to entrap you, so they lock you into, well, you've set it up that we asked you what you were doing here, you weren't doing journalism suddenly, you were actually here for a purpose that was unlawful.
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So that's why we all, at least we can say, they don't need, they know why I'm there.
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They just need to be able to argue that they believed or that they had reason to conduct an investigation.
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But as soon as he realized I wasn't going to fall for his trick, he just, you know, stomps away.
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That video of Daniel being arrested, last I checked, it had over 200,000 views, and that was just after a couple of days.
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We're on other platforms these days, Rumble, Odyssey, Super U.
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I appreciate the fact that you are resilient, and same with Daniel, that you're not letting this get you down.
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I saw the red rings around his wrist where the handcuffs were.
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That looked like it hurt, but Daniel doesn't seem like a weak, like he seems like almost a tough guy almost.
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Ezra, it has to do really with the fact that we have the support of the Rebel News team and the Rebel viewers.
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You've got to understand, I've been doing this now for a few years.
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And before I joined Rebel September last year, I was getting arrested, and it was going unchallenged at some of these events.
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And it was a bit tiring, and it was a bit, you know, you did feel alone, and some days you did want to give up.
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But now, whenever we go into these situations, and we don't go into them wanting to get arrested, we don't go into them expecting to get arrested.
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I did a big report the day later that came out after the Daniel event last night, our time, or today, your time.
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So we go there for an objective, and we always have.
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In the past, before I joined Rebel, I kind of had to get arrested.
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I never got charged because I was still abiding by all the rules and making sure to work within the confines of the law.
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But they targeted me, and I didn't have the backing of both the Rebel team, the Rebel lawyers, and, most importantly, the Rebel viewers.
00:26:02.440
We didn't have that whole setup and that structure ready to back us when we need it.
00:26:06.680
It was really – I had a lot of viewers, but it was really me alone.
00:26:14.900
And just the amount of people over this weekend with the Freedom Day rallies in Sydney and Melbourne and the amount of people sending emails that are looking for that support are coming to us because they know that's where the support is garnered to fight for people who the system is trying to intimidate out of standing for their rights.
00:26:36.480
Well, I know that you get a lot of news tips because you're one of the few freedom fighters left down under.
00:26:42.720
We've got to go really quick, but give me a quick survey of the different parts of Australia.
00:26:55.420
Can you give our viewers like a one-minute tour of the Australian map telling us what's under lockdown and what isn't?
00:27:04.940
It's very confusing to know who's under lockdown day by day in this country because Australia has chased this unrealistic goal of zero.
00:27:15.900
Now, throughout the pandemic, you know, people have pointed to Australia and, wow, you see lockdown's working, you can get to zero.
00:27:21.320
But they don't tell you we're an island and we've essentially been in jail.
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I have not been allowed to, through this pandemic, go visit them, for example, and my family.
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But there's right now 34,000 Australians stuck overseas.
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And that's all because we've been chasing zero, a target of zero cases.
00:27:51.100
Now, right now, under lockdown, I believe we have Victoria, where I am, Melbourne.
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That's been the most locked down city in the world.
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They're saying we are going in and out of lockdown as outbreaks come up.
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New South Wales has the big outbreak at the moment.
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They've been in lockdown for, I think, about five weeks now.
00:28:16.380
And there's no end in sight because, you know, the Delta variant is out of control.
00:28:24.540
Their Premier, until this outbreak, was often, you know, attacking our Premier for locking down so much,
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saying that they kind of managed every outbreak without locking down,
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but has, you know, taken a full turn and now is locking down.
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And every day we hear the restrictions are getting tighter and tighter.
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South Australia, I believe, is also in lockdown over one case.
00:28:49.540
The question is, I think, really what happens in New South Wales.
00:28:55.360
In New South Wales, if they do not manage to bring it back down to zero,
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which my prediction is I don't believe now they're going to get it back down to zero,
00:29:04.380
only because, not because they're not trying to restrict people's movement.
00:29:10.540
But I think the people of New South Wales are much less compliant.
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Victoria is the most compliant city in the world.
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That's why we've been locked down so many times.
00:29:19.060
People just cop it and people do it and they just they accept what the communist government here says as the word of God.
00:29:29.400
In New South Wales, we're seeing the spreading by people, you know, just going on about their lives.
00:29:33.740
So I believe that if it doesn't get under control in the next few weeks, then they're going to finally have to learn to live with it just like the rest of the world is learning to live with.
00:29:47.620
And, you know, sadly to say, I think the worst thing that can happen for Australia is if they manage to get it back to zero,
00:29:54.920
because it means we're going to be in and out of lockdown until who knows when.
00:30:01.220
Because if you look at Israel, if you look at countries that are highly vaccinated, you're seeing that they're having spikes in numbers again.
00:30:07.680
So if that is really what you're chasing, we're never going to get out of lockdown.
00:30:12.160
Yeah, well, I think some people would like that.
00:30:18.220
And I'm thrilled that Madeline's on the case and look forward to your next video.
00:30:46.040
Our motto now is telling the other side of the story.
00:30:52.120
We brief our people on the law all the time, whether it's the law of defamation or the law of trespass.
00:31:04.080
And I'm not sure if it's our conduct or if it's that police are getting more trigger happy.
00:31:09.380
And the law itself is getting more censorious, as is popular culture.
00:31:13.280
But what's the worst part of it is that the Conservative Party is now fully aligned with Trudeau
00:31:23.140
I hung out with a few Conservative MPs lately who say they're not pleased with the direction.
00:31:27.080
But yesterday's actions by Melissa Lansman and her campaign certainly caused me concern.
00:31:34.460
I want us to be well-behaved in terms of the law.
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But I don't want to bend the knees to politicians who don't want us asking prickly questions.
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Melissa Lansman has tried to brand David Menzies as a homophobe.
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Asking questions about sexuality would, I think, generally be off limits, except for
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the fact that Melissa Lansman's whole campaign and her whole positioning in the party is
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I think she just wants to drown out the larger crisis, which is that the Conservative Party
00:32:08.520
And whether your name is Jim Karahalios or Derek Sloan or even Pierre Polyev, who is
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demoted for being too much of a tall poppy, I don't think it's just Rebel News that's
00:32:22.980
We're the ones who are usually censored first because we're the toughest.
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But if Rebel News is censored today, you can bet you'll be censored tomorrow.
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Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,